the blower's daughter
by xshedreamsinredx
Summary: Zeus/Hera. He has always believed in the philosophy of destroying the things he loves rather than giving them up. /Companion piece to 'it's only the weight of your veins'


**A/n: **This is a companion and a continuation – of sorts – piece to **'it's only the weight of your veins'** but can also be read as a standalone. Frankly, some of the reviews I got for it were quite provocative and I just could not stop writing. I did use **serial fanatic's** prompt: 'eternity is a very long time' but I'm not sure I got it down to a T.

**the blower's daughter  
**_"I can't take my eyes off of you."_

**I.**

He sees her on the shoreline of Arcadia for the first time.

Her pallid pink robe billows in the strong draught as she bends to collect conch shells. She is barefooted and unaware of his presence, gold spun hair left poetically tousled by the rough wind. "Who are you?"

The shells slip from her hands and drop on the sand. A pair of surprising forest green eyes appraises him with uncertainty.

"My mother is looking for me." Her pink lips tremble as she forces out the words. The column of her throat left exposed by her robe quivers and she swallows unconsciously. It is a lie.

He cocks his head at her thoughtfully. "And yet I do not see you running away to find her."

Her eyebrows furrow in confusion, trying to grasp the meaning of his phrase. He doubts she knows how endearing she appears in that moment. "I am just making sure you are aware."

He has to make an effort to keep his lips from twitching into a patronising smile lest she will be offended.

He takes a step towards her then. It makes her shift from one foot to another uneasily. She is disconcerted by his proximity. "Now that I am, why do you not answer my previous question?"

She turns to walk away from him. "Hera."

The name rings familiar in his head. He knows her. "I am Zeus."

She does not even bother to look back to acknowledge him. "I never asked to know you or your name."

The clouds rumble with his laughter. He wonders shortly if she hears it.

**II.**

Virginity is a hard kept virtue in the world of immortals and Hera is Rhea's treasured daughter. She keeps her hidden away from Olympus and its occupants, afraid that she will capture a god's attention one day and leave her be.

"Hera is fashioned for this world," Rhea tells him nervously. "The minute an immortal sees her, she is doomed. Her loveliness will prove to be a curse for her."

"I see her." It is abrupt and thoughtless of him to say it out loud but Zeus has never been one to mull over notions before letting them loose.

"Why, yes." Rhea appears taken aback for a moment before she lets his remark slide. "But you are her brother."

"As was Cronus yours."

Rhea looks at him with eyes that are too old, too wise. "What are you trying to say, _son_?"

The strain stretching through her question sets him straight and he is left with no choice but to reiterate his words like they do not account for any relevant meaning. "_I see her."_

**III.**

Mounted on his throne at Olympus, he watches over her frequently. There is a wildness about her that he has not encountered before, it draws him in. She seems rather content with flowers in her hair than a crown wrought from gold.

Themis remains at his side, smiling indulgently. She knows more than she should be allowed to. "She is exceptionally lovely and lonely. Is she not?"

He scowls as he sees a boy, a mere shepherd approach her. He says something that causes her to laugh. "Not for long."

"Yes," Themis is amused. "She seems to attract a lot of admirers."

Hera flutters her eyelashes coyly at the boy.

"What a spectacle." Zeus scoffs. "She is a goddess and he is a shepherd, she ought to know better than to associate with the likes of him."

"As opposed to the king of Olympus himself?" Themis questions wryly.

Hera laughs again, the sound drifts up to them. It is soft, lighter than the jingle of bells.

"If only." He sighs wistfully. "But she will wither, here, in Olympus."

Themis considers his statement thoughtfully before responding. "Or she might survive."

He does not dare to let his heart hope. "But she will hate me."

"There exists a fine line between love and hate," Themis pats his shoulder encouragingly, "and eternity is a very long time."

**IV.**

He pursues her everywhere she goes, obsessively and unrelentingly.

"Why do you insist on following me?" She asks him one day, her green eyes are cast down, she is busy plucking the petals of a daisy.

She avoids looking at him at all opportunities, he notes. It only serves to frustrate him. "Because you do not leave me any other option."

"Will you continue to do so even after I marry someone else?" The very question sets his blood boiling. Being the kings of god, he is not ashamed to admit that he believes in the philosophy of destroying something rather than giving it up.

She looks up at him with wide, lost eyes. "Not if I can help it."

"I am thankful," her tremulous pink lips curve slightly, she is gratified for reasons he cannot even begin to comprehend, "I thought I would have to deal with you even after-"

"No, Hera," he cuts her off abruptly, "you misunderstood me. What I meant is that you will not marry someone else if I can help it."

The daisy glides past her fingers, her eyes widen further in aghast. She opens her mouth and shuts it again when no words form.

"I care for you, Hera."

He stares fascinated as faint colour spreads to her cheeks.

"But, you do not understand," she trips and stumbles over her own words in frenzy and desperation, "you are already married and I am already being pursued by suitors and there is a boy by the name of-"

"Enough." He demands. "I will not hear you speak of such foolishness."

"I think I might care for him. I-"

He wishes she would stop speaking; her panic was only advancing his rage by every passing second and his wrecked emotions were stirring the sky with lightning and thunder.

He steps towards her. "I care for you, Hera."

"Then you must let me go." She reasons.

"I am sorry," he is sad for a fleeting moment, he would have preferred for her to reciprocate his feelings, "I cannot allow that to happen."

She opens her mouth again to contradict him; he does not let her speak.

**V.**

She stops going out following the incident. Her smile blooms less frequently and she forms a habit of staring up at the sky more worriedly than ever.

Zeus knows himself to be at fault. "She fears me."

Themis with her far-sightedness does not shy away from reassuring him. "But despite that, she is drawn to you."

"What if it is not enough?"

"Only you can be the judge of that." Themis' answer is not comforting in the slightest but it is honest.

"She is innocent. Young."

"But she will not remain that way forever." Themis reflects sagely.

Zeus silently agrees.

**VI.**

He had realized a long time back the only way he could ever get Hera to agree to a union with him would be through treachery. So, he connives and devices and strikes when she is least expecting it.

The downfall of her reservations comes in the disguise of a cuckoo bird. Her reckless compassion outweighs her sense of caution and she abandons it in favour of reviving the battered bird. The minute she rushes over to pick it up from the ground, the balance of power tips.

He has her hoisted to the sky and produced before him.

"I have been searching for you, Hera."

She stubbornly refuses to look at him. Her robes are drenched indecently, cheeks darkened to appear poetic. No man, mortal or immortal, will ever get to see her like this again.

She sweeps her long, golden locks over her shoulder to cover her chest. "What is the meaning of this?"

He looms over her frame. His fingers reach out to grip her chin firmly; he forces her to turn towards him. "I will have you as my bride."

"I will not consent to it." Her body trembles in contrast to her resolute words.

"I know," and he does, he has been expecting nothing less from her. He comes closer to her, drops his fingers from her chin to allow them to ghost down the skin left exposed through her damp toga. "But I am willing to improvise."

"Zeus." There are tears forming in her eyes. Her voice is shaky. And he is sorry. "Please don't."

**VII.**

The gods are upset by his actions but their prevailing unhappiness cannot compare to Rhea's displeasure. "How dare you shame your own sister, your own blood in such an objectionable manner?"

"I asked for her hand in marriage and she refused." His answer hardly holds any remorse. "I had little to no choice but to resort to such means."

"She is but a girl," Rhea grits her teeth. "She cannot decide these matters for herself. You should have come to me."

"And would you have given me what I desired?" His voice booms with impatience, it makes the sky ricochet noisily. "Would you have given me your approval?"

"Not at first," Rhea concedes, but her temper does not give away. "But tell me now, _son_. What will you do if she still refuses to marry you? How will youforce her then? Will you resort to violence against her?"

"I will do no such thing, mother, and you are well aware of it." Zeus feels anger throb at his pulse and tries to surge it down with much discomfort. There is a storm waiting to be brewed. "I want her for myself. I love her."

Rhea is obstinate. "Then you do not love her in a way I understand."

"Your understanding is no pre-requisite." He glowers at Rhea.

Rhea raises her eyebrows, considers him. "Very well then."

**VIII.**

Hera makes him wait for another three hundred years before she agrees to marry him.

She trades in her crown of petals for one fashioned in gold. She stops running barefooted on shorelines and grass fields with her hair unbound.

Olympus destroys her more than she cares to admit. It makes her more melancholic and less carefree. Her smiles disappear altogether and not even the joy of conceiving for the first time can bring her out of distress.

She remains indifferent towards him, chooses to indulge herself in granting wishes of her worshippers and performing her duties as the goddess of matrimony than sharing any breathing moment with him apart from the necessary.

**IX.**

"Do you love Lord Zeus?" Themis asks her once.

"He is my husband." Her answer is terse.

"That does not answer my question."

"Then I do not understand the nature of your question."

He stops listening in.

Three decade into the marriage, Zeus forsakes his vows, and starts to seek company outside his wedding bed.

**X.**

The first time he returns to Olympus after days of absence, Hera does not lose her composure. She remains seated at her vanity when he pushes through the gates of their chamber. The creaking noise does not distract her for she continues silently with the task of combing her hair.

She is dressed in clothing proper only for night. "Were you expecting someone?"

She sets the brush aside on her vanity, meets his questioning gaze steadily in the reflection of her mirror. There is unvoiced anger simmering in her green eyes. "Should I have been?"

He laughs humourlessly. "I would hope not."

She lets a few seconds tick by before she begins to speak again, sombrely. "There are times, I wonder about that boy. The one I cared for."

He is behind her in an instant.

Lips placed close to her ear, he whispers. "Why ponder over the life of a mere mortal." He sweeps her hair off her neck and ghosts his fingers idly over the bare skin. The action causes her to stiffen. "They all end with the same fate, they die."

"But not with the same death." She holds her ground. "How did he die?"

He lets his lips trail down her neck, she offers no resistance. "Struck by a lightning bolt, of course."

"You are a god and yet you choose to act as a monster." Her eyes fall shut and she arches back into him slightly. "I think I might hate you."

"All for the lover of long time ago?"

"Not essentially," she admits, "but quite possibly because of your current ones."

"Are you jealous?"

"No, I am embittered. There is a difference." He reaches out to loosen her robe. "May I remind you that I did not yearn for the rank of your wife? It was forced upon me."

He sighs against her neck. "Your point being?"

She looks up at him.

"I will not stand quietly and watch you make a mockery of me. I am the daughter of Cronus." Hera may not have been fickle in her loyalties but she loathed sharing just as much as him. "I will unleash chaos on your mistresses." Her lips twist in a feral smile. "I will wreak havoc in the lives of your illegitimate children."

He turns her around with practised ease, presses his lips hungrily to hers. "I expect nothing less."

**XI.**

Hera stays true to her word; her wrath once invoked does not ever come near to subsiding. She brings mayhem to his mistresses.

She ties Alcmene' legs in knots to prevent the birth of Heracles, tricks Semele into getting consumed by his thunderbolt and bans Leto from giving birth on terra-firma. Her misguided attempts at revenge spans centuries.

"Are you jealous?" He asks again, eyes crinkling with amusement.

Hera hesitates, unable to return his stare. "Not in the least."

The refutation is a bit too late. He has his answer. "You lie."

**XII.**

He commits the gravest error by introducing the king of Thessaly as his honoured guest at the table of the gods. He purifies him of the guilt of kin slaying and grants him a place at Olympus, oblivious of him stealing treacherous glances at Hera.

"Ixion covets for many things beyond his reach." Apollo, his golden son, is the first to caution him against the man. He points in the direction of Ixion talking a bit too amicably to an uneasy looking Hera. "You should watch him closely."

He fails to.

**XIII.**

Hera comes to him in a dishevelled state. Her robe has jagged splits in it, her hair is a widely tangled mess and there are signs of dried tears on her cheeks.

"He possessed the temerity to assail me in my own chambers," her voice is tempered and there is nothing to account for the fury in her green eyes apart from her words. "He said he wanted to test the veracity of my vows himself."

The sky resonates with thunder and lightning. Olympus will soon find itself engulfed in darkness. "Did he hurt you?"

Hera shakes her head in vehemence. "I was able to evade him."

Rage, he thinks, would be too frail a word to describe his passion. "I will rip him apart into pieces with my own, bare hands."

Dark, gloomy clouds stir in the sky. He will have the world see the verge of apocalypse for the insolent mortal's actions.

"Death is a kindness," she says, "I want to watch him suffer."

So, does he.

He moulds a cloud in her form, carves it out in her phantom likeness and positions it in Ixion's bed, desiring to catch him in the act. The mortal foolishly couples with the cloud, believing it to be Hera, and is apprehended.

He seeks to create an example out of him for centuries to come and centuries to go. He orders Hermes to bind him to a winged, burning wheel, curses him to spin for the rest of eternity in depths of Tartarus. Humans grow fearsome of him in the light of the event and the gods meticulous around him.

Hera merely smiles.

**XIV.**

They walk through the rose garden of Hesperides. "You could have been the goddess of discord or beauty. Why did you settle for matrimony?"

He watches her absorb the question before she dissolves into laughter. The roses bend towards her slightly, as if in respect of the melodious sound. It has been a long time since he has heard her laugh. "Is there something you want of me?"

"An answer would suffice." He plucks a red rose from one of the laurel bushes and places it in her hair. "You have been upset with me for a long time, you could have targeted me easily by laying with Ixion," he spits the name out of his mouth with much unnecessary force, "and yet you did not. Why?"

She glances away from him, shifts from one foot to another uneasily. It is an aching reminder of the girl she used to be before he broke her. "I am the goddess of matrimony. I must stay true to my vows and husband."

He knows a lie when he hears one. "You do not care for that."

"No," she looks up at him with her wide eyes. "But I care for you and I do not want any other man than you to have that kind of power over me."

"Yet you claim to hate me."

"And I do," she admits, "but that does not make me care for you any less."

Zeus kisses her.

**XV.**

There is a shift in the nature of things that occurs after Ixion. Hera grows more subdued and tolerant towards his other children and he in turn, ceases his deceitful, philandering methods. The New Religion, costs the gods their importance and suddenly he finds himself struggling to restore them back to their glory.

He returns from his latest visit to the mortal world to find her waiting for him. She lies in repose with her back turned to him, unusually serene.

Her questions fail to make an appearance even as he collapses on the bed next to her. "It is quiet without you around. Lonely."

He knows what she means. It is quiet and lonely without her too.

He slides close to her, lets his fingers span out to tug the fastening of her robe down her shoulder and brushes a soft kiss against the bare skin. "Is than an admission?"

She rolls unto her back to face him. There is a smile in her green eyes. "Never."

He nods in understanding. "Still hate me?"

The smile in her eyes reaches to her lips. "Always."

He is grateful for her unfaltering hatred; it is the only constant thing in his ever crumbling domain. He will not begrudge her this for he knows. There exists a fine line between love and hate, and eternity is a very long time.

**-X-**

**A/n: **Well, it started out great and got away from me in the end but let me explain a few things. Firstly, I'm sick and tired of Hera being depicted as an insecure, vindictive goddess, so I chose to take those characteristics and project them in Zeus instead. I mean if you know your myths well, then Zeus is pretty much an emotionally abusive bastard and he is much like Hera in terms of jealousy. Secondly, almost every other fanfic has Hera love Zeus madly, so I intentionally left her feelings obscure and open-ended. Think of her hatred in terms of irony, it's original meaning or a paradox. Interpret in a way that suits you. Thirdly and lastly, I'm thinking of writing another piece for them. They are so incredibly messed up that it is almost addictive.

Anyways, doo leave me a review and tell me whether you liked it or not.


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